soap and water
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: "Daddy's a dark riddle, Momma's a head full of bees, you are my little kite, carried away in a wayward breeze…" A story about the mixed and troubled families of the Slytherin children and how it changes their outlooks on life.


soap and water  
  
By: ShinigamiForever  
  
Warnings: mild slash.  
  
Disclaimer: Do you see Draco snogging Harry in the books? No? Then they do not belong to me, do they? "Soap and Water" belongs to Suzanne Vega. She's a wonderful singer, and this song is awesome.  
  
Summary: "Daddy's a dark riddle, Momma's a head full of bees, you are my little kite, carried away in a wayward breeze…" A story about the mixed and troubled families of the Slytherin children and how it changes their outlooks on life.  
  
A/N: This is inspired by "Touch Is", by The Perfect Drain. A nice little story about how touch affects each of the 5 boys in Gryffindor. This was a little harder for me to do, with the Slytherins, simply because we only know 3 of them, one of them is barely developed, the other 2 not developed at all. But that has never stopped fanfic authors, has it? BTW, Blaise is now male and there are only 4 males in the 1991 year of Slytherins in my story.  
  
Enjoy!  
  
-----  
  
Sometimes, Vincent wonders about Gregory, but mostly he worries about-  
  
  
  
Gregory used to love Asian prints. He liked the women with their pale faces, round and puffy and all white. He liked their eyes, little slits of black on white. And he loved their brilliant costumes, full of colors and textures and silks. He loved his prints, until his parents decided they were not for boys.  
  
  
  
Draco loves the smell of rice vinegar. He remembers that he had crawled into his mother's lap as a child and found the scent of rice vinegar on her hands. It was a warm scent, comforting and not acidic like most vinegar was known for. He remembers that smell, and now he associates that smell with his mother's thin curves and light embraces.  
  
  
  
Blaise isn't sure at all how he will fit in with all these other students. He's never really felt in place, not since his mother-  
  
  
  
Vincent grew up with Gregory more than he had grown up with Draco, so he thinks he knows Gregory a little bit better. They've been friends since they were 3 years old. Vincent knows things, like the fact Gregory liked Oriental things and how Gregory loves the smell of jasmine soap. Vincent likes to think that Gregory will be his one friend throughout his life, and that maybe one day they'd be so habituated they could shape their minds together into one fusion. He likes to think that. Things like that. Just so he won't be alone (ah, but you are alone anyway, Vincent, alone alone alone).  
  
  
  
Gregory knows that he and Vincent aren't really stupid; they just look and talk like they are, and they keep the act up just so everyone else is comfortable (how can he stand them, those two, blokes, both of them, stupid, aren't they?). He knows this, and he also knows they are friends with Draco, not bodyguards. Draco is a smart boy, smarter than Gregory or Vincent, and he knows how to take care of himself. So Gregory and Vincent are really actually friends with Draco. They would all be willing to risk their lives for each other. They were each other's confidantes and companions. So Gregory wants to know what's wrong with Draco, and why Draco looks so sad all the time even when he shouldn't be (gray eyes with crystal gaze, lovely, isn't he?).  
  
  
  
There's something that Lucius refuses to tell Draco, something that keeps Narcissa in check, both of them speaking from great distances to each other. Draco knows it, and he despises whatever is between them. He hates the fact his mother and father act like strangers towards each other. He knows that most pureblooded families were like this, although he has a sneaking suspicion the Weasleys were very different from his family. But regardless whether or not he could do anything about it, Draco would really like to know (if he would ever have someone to love him) what- or maybe it's a who- is keeping his parents from really touching each other.  
  
  
  
Blaise knows that all Slytherin families had weird relationships, and all Slytherin children were screwed up somehow. That isn't to say that the other houses don't have their fair share of wackos and weirdoes, but every child who is admitted into Slytherin is insane in some way or another. He doesn't know how strange his roommates or their families are. But he thinks, and he has a gut feeling and common sense to back this one up, that even in this crowd, the statement, "My father murdered my mother," would still be considered insane.  
  
  
  
Vincent wants to be important somehow (even though he would never shine), but he isn't really sure how, and exactly what he wants to be important for. But he knows that's what he wants, and that's why-  
  
  
  
Gregory wants to be left alone (even though he is frightened of loneliness), but sometimes when he is left alone, he can hear the echo of his mother's screaming in his ears. He hates the sound of her voice so much that once, he even knocked himself unconscious against the wall when he was left alone. That's why the teachers always make sure Vincent is with him. That's why they are always together.  
  
  
  
Draco wants to get away, not just from Hogwarts or from the wizarding world, but away from everything. But he would never even dream of committing suicide (even though his blood calls to him at night).  
  
  
  
Blaise wants to start over again (even though he thinks he'll make the same mistakes), because he's sure that somehow, somewhere, he screwed up and that's why his mother is dead.  
  
  
  
Vincent likes orange juice better than he likes pumpkin juice. He likes orange juice because it's slightly acidic and sweet at the same time, cold and down to earth. He doesn't dislike pumpkin juice, he just likes orange juice better. On top of that, Draco always smells like oranges, and Vincent likes the scent and the taste that goes along with it.  
  
  
  
There are times Gregory thinks he would be better off in the Muggle world, where there is nothing but the slow moving monotony of everyday, no magic, no prestige, no ranking of pureblood and how it should affect yourself. But he figures that there must be something like that too, in the Muggle world. Still, he doesn't think he belongs here, not him, he who likes embroidery and painting and artistic beauty instead of flying and fighting and being manly.  
  
  
  
Draco doesn't really hate Muggles, but he pretends he does, because if he does that, it gives him a chance to talk with his father. If Draco plays along, he's rewarded with a conversation, and he gets to listen to his father speak. He believes that it isn't actually the Muggles that Lucius hates; it's something else that Lucius can't get his hands on, and so he channels it down to the Muggles instead. Sometimes, Draco regrets pretending, especially when Hermione Granger throws him a reproachful glare as she sweeps by him. It's not Granger that he regrets hurting though; it's the black-haired boy beside her (don't tell me you love me, don't don't don't).  
  
  
  
Blaise knows the importance of names and magic, and so he never says his mother's name out loud, in case his voice draws her out of her grave. It isn't that he doesn't want to see her, he does. He just doesn't want her to go back to the living hell her world was before she died. He doesn't want her to haunt him physically, because she already haunts him mentally (crying at night, when we wanted what we should not want, a mother's touch is haunting).  
  
  
  
Vincent appreciates beauty, and he knows that there are two boys in Hogwarts that deserve each other, both because of their beauty and their soul, even if that sounds romantic and sappy, it's true. He knows that Draco loves Harry Potter in an obsessively unhealthy way, and he also knows somehow that Lucius loved James Potter in the same way. It doesn't matter how he knows. He just does. (generation of lovers, generations of betrayal, and yet again, the golden boy falls for the devil incarnate)  
  
  
  
Gregory has a portrait of Potter tucked away in his sketch book somewhere, a quick flurry of lines and curves and glasses. It's somewhere, and he plans on digging it up sometime and giving it to Draco. Even if their fair- haired companion doesn't know, everyone in their dorm room knows that Draco Malfoy is in love with his sworn enemy. But Gregory doesn't dig up the picture, because also tucked away in that folder of pictures is one of his mother, drawn when he still loved her and she didn't hate him. (get up, you lazy bastard, get up, stop making me have to deal with you, why don't you go and kill yourself, huh? Get up.)  
  
  
  
Draco loves to sing. His mother also had a beautiful voice, and he remembers once his mother's friend told him that he sounded just like Narcissa. He likes to think that he is the male embodiment of his mother's grace and beauty and finesse. Draco sings in the shower now, especially on days when he's the only one in there. Once, he had been singing, the shampoo suds in his hair, the spray hitting his face- "Soap and water, hang my heart on the line, scour it down in a wind of sand, bleach it clean-" And then Blaise showed up out of nowhere, naked and cold, turned on the water and sang the rest of the line- "to a vinegar shine." They washed in silence afterwards, but Draco finds himself humming the tune now, in the shower (his fingers feel like the water, no, don't think about that, his fingers, the water).  
  
  
  
Blaise is sure the world is a fool. He's seen Harry Potter before in public, the little boy traumatized as a youth, the boy looked upon as a hero, the young man crowded until he was out of breath. Idiots, he thinks, all of them (Harry Potter, isn't he beautiful, Harry Potter, isn't it tragic, Harry Potter, isn't he, isn't he, isn't he). They never looked close enough and saw behind the mirror eyes the broken spirit, the young Romeo who loved another Romeo. Idiots.  
  
  
  
Vincent realizes that it's probably too late for his family ever to see him, ever to see anything about him besides the coarse and rough exterior of their failure son. In his dreams, he goes back home and his mother and father welcome him, but he knows in truth they would never accept him. When he is old enough, he plans to move far far away, travel the world and never stop in one place long enough to make a family.  
  
  
  
Gregory hates the common room because everything is so green and his mother's eyes are green.  
  
  
  
Harry tells Draco that he's lucky to have a family, but Draco knows the truth, and the truth is that Harry is lucky not to have one. At least he won't have to know how it feels to have your father stare you in the eye and ask you to give yourself up to a dream you never had faith in. Yes, Draco thinks as he walks the path back to the dorm room, he's lucky. And Draco was simply-  
  
  
  
Blaise is curious about how someone could love another person so much that they would consider killing just to keep that person near them. He can't fathom it. He thinks that if he can understand, then he would understand why his father stood over his mother with a knife and kissed her as he plunged down, and how he would stare with blood stains on his hands, staring at his young son, freezing in his nightgown (and do you still have nightmares, laying awake at night, pondering, ever thinking?).  
  
  
  
Vincent likes the night and sleep. It's anonymous and empty and clean, none of the messy thoughts of daylight, and no one can really see anyone's face. It's blurry and beautiful. Vincent likes to pull his curtains closed and think about his bed as his little world, with nothing but him and the blankets and the sound of breathing all around him.  
  
  
  
Gregory hates the night because there is nothing to distract him from the diatribe inside his head. He remembers the first night, when they were all young and just pulled away from the harsh embrace of their families, and he remembered crying for a mother who hated him, just because she was his mother.  
  
  
  
Draco never sleeps at all if he can help it because he's afraid that if he sleeps, he'll never wake up again. He's afraid of dying without being able to kiss soft pink lips again or without hugging the thin body of his mother again or without peeling away the wrapper of a cherished present or without touching the ivory keys of a piano or without seeing emerald green eyes behind glass lenses. He's afraid, and he doesn't want to close his eyelids, fearing the imprint of his father's face in the back of his mind.  
  
  
  
There is an unspoken rule that once the light is turned out, no one speaks in the dorm room. But Blaise needs to say what's been on his chest all day, needs to get this out in the open where it could be blown away by the comforting solidity of his roommates. So he looks up at the dark ceiling and thinks, sometimes it's not enough just to have a family. His voice is too piercing and forced as he says it out loud, but he has the feeling everyone understands him and everyone silently agrees.  
  
  
  
Soap and water  
  
Take the day from my hand  
  
Scrub the soap from my stinging skin  
  
Slip me loose from this wedding band  
  
Soap and water  
  
Hang my heart on the line  
  
Scour it down in a wind of sand  
  
Bleach it clean to a vinegar shine  
  
Daddy's a dark riddle  
  
Momma's a headful of bees  
  
You are my little kite  
  
Carried away in a wayward breeze  
  
Soap and water  
  
Wash the year from my life  
  
Straighten all we trampled and tore  
  
Heal the cut we call husband and wife  
  
Daddy's a dark riddle  
  
Momma's a handful of thorns  
  
You are my little kite  
  
Caught up again in the household storm  
  
Daddy's a dark riddle  
  
Momma's a headful of bees  
  
You are my little kite  
  
Carried away in a wayward breeze  
  
  
  
A/N: Well? Leave a review? You've come this far already!  
  
Thanks go to:  
  
Amalin, for everything she has done for me. Her beta-ing really helped, and she is just so supportive! Hugs and kisses, Amalin.  
  
All the readers who read, never mind if you reviewed. I'm just happy you dropped by! 


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